Lecter Psychiatry: Pat and Tiffany
by John Lee Hawk
Summary: Pat and Tiffany find themselves in a spider's web when Cliff Patel moves away and refers them to Dr. Hannibal Lecter.


8

Lecter Psychiatry: Pat and Tiffany

(I do not own Hannibal or Silver Linings Playbook. There will be a disclaimer at the end)

Hannibal avoided couple's therapy like the plague. It was probably his least favorite part of the job. Couple's therapists were experts on love, tenderness, and communication; Hannibal knew about those things, but he had more experience manipulating them than actually experiencing them. And honestly, they bored him. Dissecting a troubled person's mind was more fun for him than repairing a relationship. Couples therapists were healers, whereas Hannibal preferred to observe and destroy.

Pat and Tiffany were an exception, however. They were an odd mix being two people with a history of mental illness. Some people saw them as an upbeat example of the saying "love conquers all." Hannibal dug deeper to find the truth, and saw a potentially catastrophic situation. Pat had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder and spent time in a mental hospital after assaulting a man who Pat's now ex-wife had been cheating with. Pat had been out of the hospital for a while, and was regularly taking medication, now. While Hannibal had seen many cases like Pat, Tiffany was what really interested him. The reason for that was that nobody really agreed what her condition was. For most of her life, she had been highly-introverted with episodes of major depression, a spout of hypersexuality, and occasionally suffered from what could be described as high anxiety but not the same type of manic episodes as Pat did. Such unusual characteristics made Hannibal want to meet her in person.

"I've been taking my medication and everything," Pat said, talking fast and shaking in his chair. "But… sometimes… I feel like or I'm worried that I gonna have another episode. You know, you know… it just really scares me... that… that I'm gonna do something stupid or get arrested or lose my job. I mean… I mean I had to fight for my job. I need the money, so I can't lose that job. I mean… I mean, fuck! I'm sorry, it's just – "

"Pat," Hannibal interrupted. "You're talking very fast, and I need you to calm down."

Pat nodded and took a few deep breaths.

"That's good," Hannibal said. "I think your problem is more an anxiety about your disorder than the disorder itself."

"Anxiety… about my disorder?" Pat asked. "Wow… I mean, damn! That just blew my mind, Dr. Lecter."

Hannibal nodded.

"Our harshest critics tend to be ourselves," Hannibal continued. "Your condition is treatable, manageable, and you've done a fine job. You're anxious because you care so much about it, which I commend you for."

"Thanks," Pat replied. "I… I just –"

"Is your job the only thing you're afraid of losing?" Hannibal interjected out of curiosity.

"N-no," Pat responded. "I mean… I'd be devastated if I lost my mom, my dad, my brother or Tiffany."

"Before you met Tiffany, you had been married –"

"I don't want to talk about my ex-wife!" Pat snapped.

Hannibal nodded. Once his hour with Pat was over, Hannibal escorted him back to the waiting room.

"Tiffany, I'm ready to see you now," Hannibal stated. Tiffany drew a deep breath and looked up at the ceiling.

"Finally, I've been waiting for fucking ever," she said with a fast but uninterested room. Sitting down across from Hannibal, her gaze hardly left the floor. He could definitely see some vestiges of depression.

"Is this your first time speaking to a psychiatrist?" Hannibal asked.

"No," Tiffany replied with slight indignation, still looking at the floor.

"Your experiences weren't particularly pleasant?"

"Not really."

Hannibal was silent for a moment, considering what to say next.

"Do you ever feel that people try to label you?"

"Isn't that what people like you do?" Tiffany asked, finally looking up. She was surprised to see that her comments seemed to have no effect on Hannibal's expression, his still face unmoved and his neutral eyes still the same.

"My job is to help you, Tiffany," he said. "I think the mistakes of previous psychiatrists have caused you more harm than good."

That insinuation caught Tiffany off-guard, and she did not know what to say. She looked into Hannibal's eyes and saw nothing; no love, no hate, no sympathy or malice, just two blank irises. It felt refreshing to her.

"Do you think the psychiatrists helped you?" Hannibal asked.

"No," she admitted. "Not at all."

"When was the last time you spoke to one?"

"A while ago. I sort of just decided I was done with it."

"What made you change your mind?"

"Pat," she replied. "He found you after his old therapist moved away, and he thought you could do us both some good."

"Do you think you need help?"

"I don't know," Tiffany said with resignation.

"When you and Pat first got together, how did other people react?" Hannibal inquired.

Tiffany shrugged.

"His family thought I was fucked up."

"People thought you would not be good influence for him?"

"Yeah."  
"I think they were wrong," Hannibal said. "In fact, I think your relationship with him was instrumental to Pat's recovery."

Tiffany was surprised to hear somebody saying this. Most of the time, people immediately judged people like her without even thinking.

"Going back to what I said earlier about labels, people don't like being labeled because society uses them to shun us," Hannibal continued. "They deem us to have an ailment and dismiss us forever. Once that happens to us, all we can do is find others who have been shunned, and join them. When you and Pat met, you both had been judged and shunned for your conditions, were you not?"

"Yeah, that sounds about right," Tiffany responded. She was paying much more attention now, much more interested in what Hannibal had to say.

"You and Pat both know what it's like to be cast out from mainstream society, and you both know what it's like to lose the one you love."

Tiffany's expression suddenly turned into a hostile glare.

"Pat's wife cheated on him, my husband died; there's a difference."

"I know," Hannibal replied. "But the loses affected both of you greatly, and happened in a recent amount of time before you two met each other. I think the reason you opened up to Pat, and he opened up to you, was because you understood each other. You both knew what it was like to be stigmatized, you both knew what it was like to feel like to lose your spouse.

"You're a strong individual, Tiffany. If not physically then emotionally. You're used to being put down by society, and you're used to fighting back. You're used to being mistreated, and being harsh has become second-nature to you as a result. But sometimes, there's been somebody who found a way past the walls to your true self, and he fell in love with what he saw."

Tiffany was stunned by Hannibal's inference, and she felt more vulnerable now than she had in a long time.

"It must have destroyed you when your husband died," Hannibal said suddenly, his neutral tone never fading. "You opened yourself up for the first time, and fate repaid you by hurting you so much. I read about your behavior after he died. How you lost your job after having sex with every one of your coworkers. You were so desperate to forget about your husband and numb yourself to his loss that you would do any filthy thing you could think of to distract yourself.

"How desperate were you to escape that pain? Or rather, to escape the memories of him? You didn't drink or do drugs, you just shut yourself down and had sex with anything that came your way. Either way, you never did escape it. You still haven't. The pain is still there, and you will never escape it. That feeling of worthlessness will never go away, for it has been ingrained in your soul, now."

Tiffany was silent, but a tear traveled down her face. Her eyes did not leave Hannibal's, and his were still blank. Hannibal knew that Tiffany had a reached a precipice that, if crossed, could lead her to having a nervous breakdown or committing suicide. He had stripped her mind to its most sensitive components, and Hannibal could have used it to destroy Tiffany.

"But then you met Pat," Hannibal said. He decided to spare Tiffany and to bring her back from the brink.

"While our pain will never leave, we can learn to balance it out with the good parts of our lives," he continued. "The way to move on from a loss is to balance out our grief with the love we have for others, be it family or somebody new."

Tiffany felt more tears coming down her face, and she silently fought to suppress them. Hannibal reached over and handed her a box of tissues. Hannibal was also silent, giving Tiffany a minute to herself.

"Regarding all of the things that people have labeled you with – depressed, bipolar… crazy – I think they're wrong," Hannibal stated, this time with a slightly warmer tone. "The truth is, I've never encountered a condition quite like yours, before. Honestly, to me, your condition seems much more indicative of a chemical imbalance than mental illness."

"R-really?" Tiffany asked. Hannibal nodded.

"I believe what you have has less to do with your mind than the environment you grew up in. I believe something altered your development, and that it will be much easier to treat than typical case of bipolar disorder or major depression."

For the first time during the whole session, Tiffany started to smile a little bit. Eventually their hour ended, and Hannibal showed her to the waiting room.

"Hey, how'd it go?" Pat asked Tiffany.

"It went good," she replied with a weak tone, then hugged him tightly. "It went good."

A larger man then walked into the waiting room.

"Finally," he said. "How much longer is this damn thing going to take?"

"Hannibal, this is my brother," Pat introduced. "Tiffany and I don't have a car, so I got him to drive us."  
"Let's just get the hell out of here," Pat's brother commented. Hannibal felt hostility ripple through his body. Pat and Tiffany may have had their problems, but Pat was a good man and Tiffany was at least interesting. Pat's brother was different, however; he was just rude. To Hannibal, rude people such as Pat's brother weren't even people… they were food.

"Can have your business card?" Hannibal asked when Pat's brother started bragging about his company.

I do not own Hannibal or Silver Linings Playbook. Hannibal is owned by Thomas Harris and NBC. Silver Linings Playbook is owned by Matthew Quick and David O. Russell.

Copyright© Sean L. Hastings 2013


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